Activity tagged "politics"

Posted:

The two candidates in today’s primaries that received substantial backing from cryptocurrency PACs both won their primaries.

1. John Curtis defeated Trent Staggs in the Republican Utah Senate primary, with the help of $1.7 million in crypto industry funding.

2. George Latimer defeated Jamaal Bowman in the Democratic primary for NY H-16, with the help of $2 million in crypto industry funding.

Ads run by these PACs made no mention of crypto or technology. In the NY race, ads from Fairshake seemed to align very closely with AIPAC’s aggressive campaign against Bowman, echoing their messaging accusing him of antisemitism.

“Defend American Jobs” was the PAC splashing out in the Utah race. They’re the Republican-focused crypto super PAC; “Protect Progress” is the Democrat counterpart.

Though Fairshake (nominally nonpartisan, and by far the highest fundraiser of the crypto PACs) previously made identical donations to both, they’ve just made another $5 million donation to Defend American Jobs without a corresponding donation to Protect Progress.

Defend American Jobs has raised $14.7 million so far this cycle; Protect Progress has raised $10.3 million.

Here's a glimpse at the spending in each race.

Charts showing amounts raised by each candidate, and amounts spent by outside groups to support or oppose. John Curtis raised around $3.8M, $9.2M was spent to support him, and $3.5M of that support came from the crypto industry. Brad R. Wilson raised $5M. Trent Staggs raised $1.25M, $900k was spent to support him, and $1.9M was spent to oppose him, $1.5M of which came from the crypto industry. Jason Walton raised $2.9M.
Charts showing amounts raised by each candidate, and amounts spent by outside groups to support or oppose. Jamaal Bowman raised around $4.3M, $1.9M was spent to support him, and $12M was spent to oppose him, $2.1M of which came from the crypto industry. George Latimer raised $5.8M. $5.6M was spent to support him, and $1.1M was spent to oppose.

Other outside spending for Curtis mostly came from a super PAC called Conservative Values for Utah, with Defend American Jobs pitching in $5M last minute.

And as I mentioned, Bowman’s other opposition primarily came from AIPAC's UDP.

Read:
"Crypto bros are the most powerful new donor class—Trump's SF fundraiser proved it".
Paul Bradley Carr in The San Francisco Standard. Published .
So what gives? Why the hell would the famously liberal denizens of Silicon Valley and the idealistic dreamers behind Bitcoin and AI possibly be in the tank for such a nakedly fascistic candidate?  … is a question you would only ask if you’ve been asleep for the past 15 years.
Read:
"Incomplete vs. overshoot".
Cory Doctorow in Pluralistic. Published .
The anti-enshittification movement rightly criticizes the old, good internet because it wasn't inclusive enough. It was a system almost exclusively hospitable to affluent, privileged people – the people who least needed the liberatory power of technology. Likewise pro-enshittification monopolists – billionaires and their useful idiots – deplore the old, good internet because it gave its users too much power. For them, ad-blocking, alternative clients, mods, reverse-engineering and so on were all bugs, not features. For them, the enshitternet is great because businesses can literally criminalize taking action to protect yourself from their predatory impulses. Superficially, it seems like the pro- and anti-enshittification forces agree – they both agree that the old, good internet was a mistake. But the difference that matters here is that the pro-enshittification side wants everyone mired in the enshitternet forever, living with what Jay Freeman calls "Felony contempt of business-model." By contrast, the disenshittification side wants a new, good internet that gives every user – not just a handful of techies – the power to decide how the digital systems they work use, and to be able to alter or reconfigure them to suit their own needs.